Clinton, Obama spar over housing crisis, ethics

APDemocratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaks during a campaign stop at the University of Pennsylvania on Monday, March 24, 2008.

Updated: 4:04 p.m.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton this morning in Philadelphia proposed the creation of "an emergency working group on foreclosures" to confront the nation's growing housing woes.

But before she even began delivering what her campaign described as a major policy address (Download the full transcript), Democratic rival Barack Obama's campaign got off a preemptive shot, raising raise questions about the New York senator's credibility as an agent of change.

Clinton's campaign has received over $919,000 in direct lobbyist contributions and $750,000 from political action committees, including more than $56,000 in contributions from the finance industry and $22,000 from lobbyists for the sub-prime lending industry, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters on a conference call shortly before Clinton's speech.

"Sen. Clinton is at home in this system," Plouffe said. "She would operate within this system. We want to change the system."

Clinton's campaign practically called Obama's campaign a bunch of hypocrits later in the day when they issues a "fact check" of their own, noting that Obama's received $1.18 million in contributions from sub-prime lenders.

Plouffe described Clinton's proposals as a repackaging of ideas already discussed during the campaign for the Democratic nomination, but said the election is "not about ideas" because their positions aren't all that different.

Instead, he sought to cast the race as being about "a fundamental approach" to doing business and changing how Washington does business.

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, returned fire later accusing the Obama's campaign of engaging in a campaign "to attack Senator Clinton's character, her candor, in personal terms, on a daily basis."

"I think it's important that voters know that at the same time Senator Obama talks about changing the tenor and tone of our politics, his staff and supporters are questioning her integrity,
questioning her character, comparing her husband to Joe McCarthy and attacking her personal life," he said, referring to comments made last week by Retired Gen. Merrill
McPeak, an Obama supporter.

"That's not the kind of politics that we were promised by Senator Obama, it's not the kind of politics that I think we need in this country," Wolfson told reporters.

In her UPenn speech, Clinton called on President Bush to fill a panel with some of the top financial minds such as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary in her husband's administration, and former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker.

Clinton said she wants the federal government to do more to help struggling homeowners much as it is doing to help keep financial firms such as Bear Stearns from collapsing.

"If the Fed can extend $30 billion to help Bear Stearns address their financial crisis, the federal government should provide at least that much emergency help to families and communities to address theirs," she said.

The recently enacted $168 billion stimulus package that will provide rebate checks to Americans later this spring or summer "did next to nothing to help homeowners and communities struggling with foreclosure," she said.

The former first lady said the nation needs a president who can restore confidence and "will act at the first signs of trouble, working with experts to identify the problem with agencies
to adapt regulations, with Congress to pass necessary legislation; working to prevent crises rather than just reacting too little too late."

Bush, who has described the economy as going through a "rough patch," has been criticized by some experts and Democrats for not taking aggressive enough steps to stop the economic crisis from worsening.

"That means acknowledging that our economic crisis is, at its core, a housing crisis, a crisis caused in part by unscrupulous mortgage lenders and brokers and unregulated transactions in mortgage- backed securities, in part by speculators who were buying multiple houses to sell for a quick buck and other buyers who didn't act responsibly, and in part by a president and administration who failed to anticipate and continue to downplay the problems we face," said Clinton.

Earlier, Plouffe told reporters that Clinton's claim to be a reformer who can use her experience to enact change is "not fundamentally something the American people can trust."

He said it just wasn't credible for Clinton to contend that she will be able to fight the financial industry while taking hundreds of thousands of special interest contributions.

He also called again for the Clinton to release full copies of tax returns and information on contributors to former President Bill Clinton's presidential library and foundation so voters will know who is funding them.

"What is lurking in those tax returns?" he asked. "What are they hiding?"

While deriding the tactics of the Clinton campaign, the New York senator, former President Bill Clinton and their supporters -- "It is clear the Clintons will do and say anything to get elected," he said -- Plouffe highlighted Obama's credentials in the Illinois state Senate and U.S. Senate to enact reforms.

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